Technical textiles company announced a JV with German German-headquartered PD Fibre Glass Group to foray into glass fabrics in India. We will see 51:49 equity paticipation and cater to the requirements of energy, automotive and infrastructure sectors.

We aspires its technical textiles to be a $1 bn business in a decade. This project is expected to spearhead Arvind’s technical textiles story. Technical textiles contributes Rs 100 crore to business. Arvind has been manufacturing fabrics for fire retardants, filtration, personal protection since two-and-half-years.

The new facility to come up at Santej, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, will see an investment of Rs 80 crore and will manufacture 30,000 tonnes of fabric after five years. The JV is expected to give Rs 250 crore business in the first three years and eventually be a Rs 500 crore by the fifth year, said Punit Lalbhai, executive director, new initiatives.

Majority of the production will be exported initially and as India gets bullish on green energy and creates wind energy farms, the production will be diverted to the domestic market. The marketsize of glass composite industry in India stands at Rs 500 crore. “We will supply fabric to wind blade makers and see great potential in the sector.

Further, as metals get replaced with glass owing to lightweight, glass composites find more takers in infrastructure and automotive applications,” adds Milind Hardikar, group president-strategic initiatives at Arvind of the new project.

This article comes from indiatimes edit released